Affordable Care: submit psychologist bills, it won’t hurt anything

“Is it a bad idea to submit psychologist therapy appointments to my insurance for reimbursement? Will it affect me down the line from being insured? I’m trying to weigh the pros and cons.”

Privacy Lover

Dear Privacy Lover,

Under health reform laws, your health status cannot be used as a reason to charge you more for health insurance or to refuse to sell you a plan. So that is not a reason to pay for a medical service that your health plan would pay for you.

Life insurance is another matter, however. Life insurance rates can be based upon your health and medical services you have received. Even so, it wouldn’t matter whether your health insurance plan paid for your care or not. You would have to tell the truth on your life insurance application, or risk having your insurance cancelled if they discovered the truth in the first two years.

Perhaps there are other reasons to hesitate — hackers gaining access to the data, your employer getting detailed claims data — but these are not likely or pressing. If your employer did get the data, they would be prohibited from using it to make decisions about your employment. In fact, employers are generally quite careful to avoid seeing this kind of data because they would have to prove they DIDN’T use it to fire a person. It’s easier for them to simply never see this kind of info at all.